Always, when
the sitting was finished, he drew the curtain to hide the picture;
forbidding her to look at it until he said that it was finished.
Much of the time, when he was not in the studio at work, the painter spent
with Mrs. Taine and her friends, in the big touring car, and at the house
on Fairlands Heights. But the artist did not, now, enter into the life of
Fairlands' Pride for gain or for pleasure--he went for study--as a
physician goes into the dissecting room. He justified himself by the old
and familiar argument that it was for his art's sake.
Sibyl Andres, he seldom saw, except occasionally, in the early morning, in
the rose garden. The girl knew what he was doing--that is, she knew that
he was painting a portrait of Mrs. Taine--and so, with Myra Willard,
avoided the place. But Conrad Lagrange now, made the neighboring house in
the orange grove his place of refuge from Louise Taine, who always
accompanied Mrs. Taine,--lest the world should talk,--but who never went
as far as the studio.
But often, as he worked, the artist heard the music of the mountain girl's
violin; and he knew that she, in her own beautiful way, was trying to help
him--as she would have said--to put the mountains into his work.
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